Miami Century Fox

Iglesias experiments with form while showcasing the philosophical and metaphorical possibilities of poetry in this winner of the 2016 National Poetry Series Paz Prize for Poetry. Faultlessly translated by Aparicio, the individual pieces in this book-length sequence of Petrarchan sonnets are each foregrounded by brief meditations, which often read as a commentary on the work’s own movement through literary tradition: “Gray./ Gray./ Gray./ Like Anaïs’s gray mouse./ And the alien rats of 1984.” This dual structure lends the poems a rewarding dialogic quality, enacting the complex sociality of thought. In “Orange Theory,” Iglesias elaborates on this phenomenon of conversation between aspects of the self or different facets of conscious experience, provocatively conceptualizing the creative process as akin to collision and metaphor as inherently violent: “When writing I felt the tickling and scares/ of the sharp edges of bottle caps and stars.” The experiment in form is a philosophical argument that poetry can contribute to what have traditionally been envisioned as purely scholarly conversations. Iglesias offers a vision of the subject as divided while showcasing the beauty inherent in this fracturing; the fragment is revealed as “the key that will open the doors.” Agent: Julia Sanches, Wylie Agency. (Nov.)